Tag: outsourced IT

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The Cloud for Your Firm: 3 Initial Considerations for Cloud Enabling Accounting and Bookkeeping Firms Working With Small Businesses

The Cloud for Your Firm

3 Initial Considerations for Cloud Enabling Accounting and Bookkeeping Firms Working With Small Businesses

dscn0903.jpgThe potential benefits of a real-time, lean collaborative working model are too great to argue with.  Accounting professionals, bookkeepers and their small business clients are all hearing about the value of working together in the cloud, and how cloud technologies and solutions can reduce cost and improve efficiency.  There is a great deal of truth in these statements, just as there was a truth in the value of implementing computers, networks and other technologies in business.  What is not clear is exactly what businesses need “in the cloud”, and how they should approach this shift from local IT to outsourced managed service.  Initially, there are 3 issues which warrant consideration, if not deep discussion, prior to making any significant move to relocate internal IT and shift business applications to the cloud: internal use systems, client interaction, and operational support for both.

With all the discussion about cloud computing and remote access, it would seem that all the applications and solutions businesses need are now available online and paid for in low monthly subscription fees.  Anyone working with small businesses, however, comes to understand that the vast majority of these businesses are still using more traditional modes of information management and computing.   For the most part, these businesses are using PCs and local networks, possibly with a little hosted email thrown in.  Almost certainly they have a website and maybe even a fairly sophisticated e-commerce system that allows them to sell products online.  But when it comes to general office functions, and particularly back-office functions like bookkeeping and accounting, the software and the data generally reside on the office PC and server.

Accounting and bookkeeping professionals who work with small businesses are often in the same position as their business clients when it comes to information technology.  Since so much of the work involved requires the same programs and data formats as those used by the client, service providers find that they spend as much in management of software licensing and systems to support working with client data as they do on systems intended for internal use only – sometimes more.  Many of these service providers are also small businesses, and it becomes challenging to find a way to handle internal IT needs while at the same time trying to address those of the client. Where e-commerce solutions are readily available to handle operational aspects of product based businesses, the best tool set for a professional accounting firm or bookkeeping business working with small business clients may not be so easily defined.

The solution for many providers has been revealed through cloud computing and hosted application models.  With Cloud Servers, Remote Desktops, and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure now widely available as affordable alternatives to capital-intensive implementations of locally installed products, businesses are finding new abilities to manage applications and data, provide mobility and enhance collaboration.  The additional benefit is in how accounting service providers may engage with their clients in more efficient and effective ways, without the burdens of replicating data or trying to share access to a single machine or application resource.

There are a number of elements to consider before taking the file server to the parking lot and running it over with a truck.  Moving to the cloud is not a one-step process, and it is important to do a little research and collect some important information before making the final decision on how to proceed.

Internal Use Systems

Among the first of the questions to ask when considering a change in IT management approaches is “which software do we need”?  Implementing an outsourced IT arrangement, which is really what “cloud” is about”, does not necessarily mean throwing away all the existing software and starting with new.  The software in use within the firm may be exactly what it needs right now and adding full IT management, fault tolerance, and remote or mobile access could be the main scope of the requirement.  Moving from locally installed solutions to hosted solutions provides quite a number of benefits while removing many of the direct costs and frustrations of IT management and administration. The greatest benefit of this type of approach is the ability to preserve the “body of knowledge” existing in the business, knowledge invested in the people and processes already developed.

On the other hand, there may be new tools or services only available as “cloud” service, and it makes sense to explore how they may benefit the business more than the in-use applications.  The important element is to remember that the solution must address real business problems, and whether it runs in the cloud or not isn’t the first or most important thing to ask.  For example, a discussion about whether QuickBooks Online might be a better choice than QuickBooks Pro, Premier or Enterprise should be focused on the functionality provided by the applications and not which servers they are running on.  With application hosting for QuickBooks now being an available option, there is a managed IT and remote access capability for both solutions, rendering the fact that QBO is a SaaS solution almost irrelevant in terms of being a differentiator.

Client Interaction

An important aspect of adopting new technologies or working models is the consideration of how the firm and the client businesses will work together, and whether or not there is (or could be) a standardized approach that might work for most clients.  Certainly, it makes sense to standardize as much as possible.  Treating every issue or engagement as a singular event – a one-off – is the least efficient way to do business.  The key to profitability is in the firm’s ability to produce high quality work consistently and in a timely fashion.  This requires that the business be well-structured in terms of the standard processes and methods which will be used to work with client information.  When the firm and the client can work seamlessly together as and when required, and when each is responsible for their own systems and data, it is a best-case scenario. The questions relating to client interactions focus on how the firm works with clients and which tools or solutions are required to improve that situation.

It is likely that the firm will need to be able to address working relationships with various client and engagement types – where clients do some of the work, where the bookkeeper does the work, or where the participants work collaboratively together in the same systems.  While it may seem that the best way to create a dependency on your services with the client is to keep them out of the systems, empowering the client is really the key to a close and long-standing engagement.  This means that the client needs to have their own solutions and approach to cloud-enabled IT, and the accounting or bookkeeping service provider should be able to access and work within that environment.

It is rare that a small business can effectively operate without computers and software to manage information and support operations, so it makes sense that the business should have its own accounting and financial systems, too.  For the accounting service provider, it is essential that a level of understanding be gained around the use of today’s available remote and mobile access technologies, as it is with these solutions and tools that participation in client systems will be enabled.  When the client accounting solution sits on their office PC, there are limited options for working together in any real collaborative form.  Connecting to their PC via remote control is a widely recognized means of gaining access to client systems, but if the bookkeeper is on the system when there is a problem of some sort, all eyes go directly to that remote user as the likely cause of the problem.

The considerations relating to remote access to client systems focus not just on enabling a collaborative working environment, but also on mitigating risk and improving client perception.  The risk issue comes in when the accounting service provider is exposed to systems and information not relevant to their task, and the perception issue becomes material when the accounting professional becomes the software or IT service provider.  It makes sense for the accounting professional to make recommendations or suggestions about software and IT service which might benefit the business, but not to necessarily be the reseller or direct provider of the product or service.  The moment the accounting professional attempts to sell the client a software product or IT service, the relationship is changed and the client is more likely to view their accounting pro as another vendor rather than a trusted advisor.  It’s also not necessarily a great move to start a new client engagement by telling the client they have to switch accounting products to allow the accountant to work closer.  Rather, professionals need to help their clients position those products for more efficient use, which may include enabling remote or mobile access granted via deployment in the cloud.

Operational Support

When businesses outsource their IT management and administration, there is often an initial belief that all responsibilities in these areas will be handled by the IT service provider.  What is often overlooked is the reality that the firm still needs to have people attending to IT related tasks, just doing different levels of work with the technology. It is important to recognize that someone in the firm will end up dealing with various IT and process support issues, and it still makes sense to have personnel dedicated to these tasks (*Note: here’s where I suggest that the cloud changes the focus of internal IT personnel, but it doesn’t eliminate the need for them).  The service provider and solution evaluation and selection process, as well as the actual deployment and administration of services, will take valuable time away from actually performing client accounting or bookkeeping work, and there should be people attending to these issues while the business continues operating.

Where an internal IT department or contract technicians may once have supported internal systems, an operational role within the business is still required to manage outsourced IT activities, including and particularly those where clients are involved with the firm systems.  Delivering new benefits with a minimum of business disruption is the goal, and can be achieved through proper planning and coordination with team members and clients alike.

Closing Thoughts

“The Cloud” is just another way to run software and implement computing resources.  It still takes servers and software, it uses processors and storage and networking, just like more “traditional” computing models.  The difference is in how these resources are purchased and provisioned, and the impact is a change in how businesses of all types can benefit from technologies which enable collaboration, lean process, and mobility.  The Cloud for Your Firm addresses your internal business requirements, lends itself to client collaboration, and has internal operational support to ensure the firm is fully leveraging the available benefits to improve business performance and profitability.

Make sense?

J

Read more about Accountants and Bookkeepers Working With QuickBooks Clients: App Hosting Approaches That Work

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Criteria for Evaluating QuickBooks Hosting Providers: Going Beyond Pricing

Criteria for Evaluating QuickBooks Hosting Providers: Going Beyond Pricing

When a small business elects to run their QuickBooks desktop edition software in the “cloud”, it makes sense to work with an experienced provider – a company with the people and the experience to keep the QuickBooks desktop software working properly and securely.  The keys to selecting the best provider for the business are often hidden in the experiences of others; experiences which reveal issues that may significantly impact vendor selection and which have nothing to do with the price of the service. Criteria such as system performance, responsiveness to technical issues, resources for self-help, and knowledge of support personnel – these are the things that more frequently and directly impact the customer experience and, ultimately, the customer’s loyalty.

While Intuit supports QuickBooks Enterprise in terminal server and Remote Desktop environments, they only support the license when it is deployed for the single business organization the license was issued to. If a business has lots of different users on the platform and those users don’t belong to the one company who “owns” the infrastructure and the license, then the implementation is non-compliant and won’t be supported. Intuit also doesn’t offer direct support for QuickBooks Pro and QuickBooks Premier editions in remote desktop implementations, yet the software will work perfectly well in that environment. There are a few quirks and tricks to using the software in this manner, however, so provider technical experience specifically with QuickBooks is essential.

When working with a company providing managed application hosting services and not just managed server platforms, it generally means that the provider is taking responsibility not only for the server/network/infrastructure, but also for the setup, configuration and maintenance of system users and security, and the installation/management/maintenance of the applications running on the server.  When a business elects to outsource this level of service to any 3rd party, there are a variety of areas in addition to pricing which should be thoroughly explored prior to signing the service agreement.

When evaluating potential service providers, research the provider’s offerings and performance directly as well as evaluating the public’s perception of them, considering these 4 areas:

  1. Technology
  2. Innovation
  3. Business Practices
  4. Customer Satisfaction

The technology evaluation relates not only to the systems and tools applied to the service delivery, but also to the systems or tools applied to assist the customer with dealing with the service.  Too often, providers pay more attention to their ordering systems than their service delivery, believing that a quality customer experience rests more with simple purchasing processes than with a functional and well-performing application service.  Others may focus on delivering the best and highest quality application service, yet relegate their clients to sending emails or making phone calls to place service orders or request service information.  The providers who score the highest points in this category are those who recognize that both elements – service delivery and service administration – are critically important to providing a quality overall customer experience.

The innovation evaluation looks at the actual service infrastructure and delivery. This includes features as well as limitations.  One of the pitfalls of being an application service provider is the inertia created with existing systems and customers.  Once the platform is in place and there are a bunch of users on the systems, upgrading and updating the underlying technologies can be a tremendous challenge.  I have often related this as being like trying to change tires on a moving truck.  Unfortunately, systems age and lose functionality, compatibility, support, etc.

Keeping the platform updated isn’t the only element involved with scoring provider innovation.  Even more important than simple change management supporting status quo, true innovation speaks to efforts directed towards crafting a better, more functional and more useful solution delivery.  Many skilled technicians can set up a terminal server for remote access to QuickBooks using the “standard” tools available, but it takes more skill and understanding to create a service which offers more and better capability than everyone else.  The point isn’t that the provider is changing QuickBooks software in any way – that’s not really an option.  Rather, it is in how the provider elects to architect their systems and solution, and whether they are attempting to improve the experience and deliver with a unique approach rather than a generic one.

With increased competition and as some provider platforms experience challenges either due to age or capacity, certain “interesting” practices have emerged.  I now look at these business practices as part of the process of evaluating providers.  In the early days of hosting and application delivery, the business practices of various providers had some similarities, but not any more.  The practices which frustrate me most and which always cause me to score the provider with low marks in this category relate almost exclusively to transparency – or lack thereof.  Here are two scenarios which I’ve seen come up with some frequency, and which (in my opinion) are indications that the provider may not necessarily be one you want to work with.

  • A business has signed a one-year service agreement with a hosting provider, and has been required to prepay that annual contract.  The business was not provided with a demonstration or evaluation system prior to executing the service agreement; they simply trusted the information provided by sales.  After a few months on the service, the performance and support are so poor that the business wants out of the annual agreement, even though high service levels and support responses were part of the contract.  In order to be allowed to end the service agreement and stop paying for the service, the business was told they would have to not only buy out a portion of the remaining contract, but also sign an agreement not to communicate the service problems they experienced or the exit agreement terms with anyone. (*please note that I am essentially in agreement about having to buy out a committed term agreement, at least in part, but applying a gag order? Not so much).
  • A business is using the services of a hosting provider, and has a need to know details of their delivery (like server operating system version) in order to verify compatibility with a new software product they wish to purchase.  Before the business customer is allowed to obtain the information, the provider requires that they sign an agreement promising not to disclose the information they may receive to any other party.  (*note: While I recognize that this type of agreement is desirable to protect proprietary information, it is more often used to prevent the prospective customer from disclosing something potentially negative, and it certainly doesn’t do much in terms of building trust.)

The final evaluation is on customer satisfaction, where anecdotes and information is collected from both current and past customers of the provider.  Admittedly, much of this information I scour from various forums and discussion groups and interviews but it is truly amazing what you can learn about a business simply by listening to customer stories in various social venues.  The picture these stories paint is often (frequently!) very different from the “happy sunshine and rainbows” testimonials you find on websites and in marketing brochures.  Of course, who would buy from a provider who says their “support is great until you’ve been with us for a month, and then we pretty much don’t care about you any more”.  Also, people tend to be more vocal when they’re mad about something, so there is often more negative than positive out there in the social realm, so weight that carefully.  But the fact that certain provider names come up more often than others is the clue; when you don’t see the provider name come up in these discussions, it usually means they’re simply not making people mad.

There is a lot to consider in selecting the right service provider for the business, and the items listed above are just part of it.  While there are some (few) standards among application service providers, it is still what some might refer to as an “emerging” model and will continue to evolve with the market demand and technology.

For now, businesses just need to know that their solution provider is trustworthy and willing to communicate honestly and completely. Selecting the right provider – a provider who supports their business and model with full transparency to the client –  will help the business move forward just as the wrong provider is more likely to hold it back.  While pricing is an important and unavoidable aspect of the discussion, businesses should also put some focus on these other elements which help to reveal how the provider works with their customers, and to determine whether or not they can (or will even try to) meet your requirements now and in the future. 

Make Sense?

Joanie Mann Bunny FeetJ

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Cloud IT: Hiding Complexity and Risk

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Cloud IT: Hiding Complexity and Risk

Cloud computing and Internet technologies have delivered previously unimagined capability for even the smallest of businesses – capability to compete, build brand recognition, and reach markets in remote geographies.  The mantra for businesses used to be “location, location, location”, but it’s become connectivity – perhaps even more than location – which now delivers business opportunity.  As technology has evolved, allowing businesses and consumers to connect regardless of time or place, the complexity of the systems and networks have also increased dramatically.  Where a business could once easily identify their various vendors or business service providers, the identification of those involved in the service ‘delivery chain’ are no longer so easily recognized.   Among the benefits of cloud computing technologies is the ability to reach beyond traditional boundaries.  The risk for many businesses is in not fully understanding how, and with whom, those boundaries are being crossed.

For many an enterprise, the convenience and efficiency introduced with cloud computing models overshadows the increased risk potential.  Service level agreements and vendor contracts are assumed to be sufficient to protect the business and its information assets, yet recent events (such as the recent reveals of PRISM and the actions of the National Security Agency) should cause businesses to look a little deeper at their entire provider network.  It’s not that the average business should be concerned about government snooping of their emails, but they should be aware of who has access to their systems and data, and which entities are responsible for which parts of the system.  It’s only prudent to know the details, and it is the best first step to mitigate business risk.

Enterprise Clouds are complex, sophisticated entities which invariably rely on a daisy-chain of third parties and contractors to help build, run and maintain their Cloud provider’s systems. The organizational and technical complexities are additive, resulting in increased systemic risk. Systemic risk is the least visible and hardest to eliminate, and those risks become real when the providers’ systemic risks become [yours].

The question is, how well does your Cloud provider manage the ecosystem of contractors and third parties that are farther down the food chain? This is even more relevant in the globalized workforce, where, paradoxically, Cloud and related technologies have greatly facilitated the outsourcing and offshoring of work to low-cost countries. http://www3.cfo.com/article/2013/6/data-security_prism-national-security-agency-edward-snowden-cloud-implications-vendor-management

Before executing a service agreement with an outsourced provider, make certain that the details of facility, connectivity, network, equipment, and other elements of the delivery and system are spelled out.  Business subscribers should know where the various points of failure exist, and which company is responsible for dealing with each.  If a carrier fails and connectivity to the data center is lost, the hosting service provider may be powerless to impact the situation, even though access to service is part of the SLA and requirement.  If a hosted software product has a vulnerability or fails to perform, the developer of the product is likely responsible, rather than a hosting service provider.  The point is that there are often multiple players in the delivery chain, and customers should be aware of this reality prior to engaging with the service.

Ultimately, the business with mission critical data in the possession of a 3rd party service provider should have a healthy helping of doubt as to whether the provider has full control over their environment.  Business owners, managers and CFOs should recognize the increased necessity of evaluating risk within their provider systems and in provider/vendor relationships, to keep trade secrets secret and prevent intellectual property from becoming the property of others.

Joanie Mann Bunny Feet

Make Sense?

J

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QuickBooks In-House Hosting Services for Accountants

QuickBooks Hosting Services for IT-Capable Accountants

DIY-SelfHostingSmall businesses in large numbers are looking to the cloud as a platform to deliver solutions for the problems of escalating IT costs, mobility, and remote access to business data. The cloud is also becoming the recommended platform for the delivery of services from accounting and bookkeeping professionals, as the benefits of remote data access and real-time collaboration nicely address the requirement for accounting pros to exchange and share information with their business clients. One of the popular “cloud” hosting solutions addressing a collaborative accounting model is a hosted application approach to using Intuit QuickBooks desktop products. While accounting professionals may be aware that QuickBooks can be hosted by 3rd party providers, many firms are not aware of what is referred to as the “self-host” model, which is a QuickBooks hosting model for accounting firms with some in-house technical capability.

For small businesses and many accounting service providers, working with a 3rd party hosting provider makes a lot of sense, as the host has the infrastructure and the support organization necessary to service large-scale hosted customer requirements.

On the other hand, there are a lot of accounting and bookkeeping firms which have skilled in-house IT personnel who are more than capable of creating a hosting environment to serve not only their internal needs, but also to meet basic requirements of the QuickBooks-using clients they work with. It makes sense to explore the possibilities of implementing a “self-hosting” model for client access to QuickBooks, overcoming the cost and other barriers involved with 3rd party hosting services.

When an accounting firm works with a number of clients with QuickBooks desktop edition files, the firm has to install and manage not only their own software products, but also the relevant QuickBooks software products in use by the various clients (must have the right QB program in order to open the QB data file). This often puts an undue burden on the internal IT systems of the practice which has its own internal-use software and systems to support. With an internal hosting approach, the firm can provide standardized/centralized application hosting services to their clients, building their own “economy of scale” on the platform and reducing the IT management while achieving all the real-time and remote access benefits of an outsourced hosted model. The firm does not experience a retail cost for a hosting solution, and the cost to host the client is generally offset through the efficiency gained at the firm level through direct access to client data and applications.

The technical model for delivering hosting services to a relatively small client base is not overly complicated. Commercial service providers have complex architectures because they must serve a large and diverse client base, and they never really know what sort of devices (computers and printers) or connectivity the customer may have. Commercial providers have to be prepared to deal with any and all situations, where a “self-host” firm needs only to concern themselves with supporting their particular client users and use cases. Additionally, when the solution is offered as part of the accounting or bookkeeping service, the support requirements of the customer tend to be focused during mutual working hours, as opposed to the 24×7 support demanded of the commercial host.

As accountants and bookkeepers search for solutions to improve efficiency, increase profitability and differentiate services, it makes sense for those serving QuickBooks desktop clients and having an in-house IT capability to explore becoming a QuickBooks self-host. It is one possible way to eliminate cost as a barrier to working closer with QuickBooks desktop clients while providing the mobility and collaboration businesses need.

 

Make Sense?

Joanie Mann Bunny FeetJ

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A Holistic Approach to Cloud IT

holistic: a. Emphasizing the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts.

The Internet and cloud computing solutions can help businesses create an environment which allows team members and clients to work together more efficiently; where information can be generated once and used in a variety of ways by different users.  With this new capability to share documents and files in real-time, many businesses are finding that they are generating more electronic information today than ever before – and they’re having a hard time keeping these information assets organized.  With paper documents being digitized to allow for electronic distribution, OCR, and intelligent connecting to transaction data – lots of stored data is being produced and stored in a variety of places.

There are many technology models available, so there are a lot of options for businesses today – options which address the fundamental requirements to convert, store, secure, and distribute the various data types within the enterprise.  When a business elects to use a variety of cloud solutions or providers to address a number of business problems, how does that enterprise wrap its arms around the content which represents, in all actuality, the sum of business intelligence in the enterprise?  Keeping tabs on the business data is critical, but tracking all the data when it is stored with a variety of providers may be very difficult.

Example: If your business uses an online CRM such as Salesforce.com, runs QuickBooks on your local PC, and uses Gmail for email service… exactly where does your business data live?  With Salesforce?  On your local PC?  At Google?  In all 3 places?

Containment of distributed data isn’t the only issue facing businesses today.  Longevity and long-term access to data is a concern, as well.  Solutions and providers that exist today may not exist tomorrow.  If you have data invested in a solution with a short life span (and you probably won’t know this is the case until it’s too late), you may orphan your data and not be able to access it later.   And, if you can get your data from the provider, is it in a useful form or did you lose functionality when you lost the solution?

Example:  Intuit once introduced a paperclip (attached documents service) in QuickBooks, and offered the attached document feature at no charge.  The “free” service from Intuit encouraged a lot of users to migrate from other QuickBooks-connected document management solutions. Then… Intuit announced that the attached documents service would no longer be free.  Users with the service could still get to their documents via a web portal, but not from within QuickBooks, and certainly not as attachments to transactions or other records. Then the attached documents feature was once-again changed, allowing only storage to local PCs rather than on Intuit’s servers. Then, it went away entirely. 

Another issue facing businesses operating in the cloud is one of vendor lock-in (or lock-out), and being able to address the total business requirement.  Point solutions and vendor-specific solutions may address certain business problems, but generally aren’t able to handle all of the needs of a given business.  If your online solution doesn’t address the needs of the entire business, you risk increasing production costs and reducing productivity through duplication of data entry and other activities.

Example: An accounting firm with an insurance division uses Thomson Reuters Virtual Office service, which delivers certain accounting applications along with Microsoft Office on a remote desktop type of connection.  Unfortunately for the firm, the users operating in the insurance division use applications that aren’t supported or available via the Virtual Office solution.  So, certain users have completely disconnected services – a remote desktop serving up their Office apps, and a separate browser-based solution – neither of which integrate or work together.  The complexity and confusion caused by this situation has done little more than increase the burden of duplicate data entry, recreation of documents, and constant download-save-upload activities.

In each of these cases, a “holistic” approach to cloud IT services might have produced better results than by looking at each application or functional “solution” individually.

As an example, consider that a business with in-office and mobile employees needs to use accounting, office productivity, contact management, documents storage, and several browser-based solutions in order to provide the functionality and operational support necessary.    While many of these solutions are individually available online, the business opts to work with a single outsourced IT provider to create their own “private cloud” environment.

The solution includes remote/virtual desktops, hosted accounting applications, hosted Office applications, hosted browser (to allow browser and Internet-based apps to integrate with Office and other apps on the remote desktop), hosted CRM, and hosted document management… all applications that the business selects and might even have been using for years are included.

All  applications are delivered on the remote desktop environment, providing users with the ability to open documents instantly, save and share files seamlessly, and participate in a central company-wide document store.

All applications are licensed to the business, so they have the flexibility of returning to local IT operations simply by implementing their own software in their own network and taking the data off the host.

Because all of the business data resides on this single hosting platform, the business is able to not only keep control of all information assets, but is also able to back up and protect (preserve) that data in its entirety.

Now doesn’t that make sense?

J

Learn more…

 

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Moving Your Systems to the Cloud

The IT industry is promoting Software as a Service and online applications as the new normal for computing, and unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years you have heard how it is supposed to make our computing lives ever so much better.  Hiding under that rock might also have spared you from reading about the various failures and outages which impact users, forcing them to make do without the online applications and data they have become so reliant upon.  It’s surprising, but not unimaginable, that businesses rely so heavily on applications and services that didn’t even exist a few short years ago.

The potential benefits of a SaaS model are many, but the risks are equally significant and should not be minimized.  This assessment should center on a review of the application software in use, considering whether or not it is meeting the needs of the business.  Where and how the software runs is much less of an issue than the functionality and process support it provides – most “legacy” applications can be run in a cloud server environment, making remote access and managed service part of the service model.

There is risk in changing business applications – risk of data loss, changed or broken data relationships, lost productivity, and more.  Many businesses would benefit by running their applications in a cloud model while continuing to utilize the software solutions their operation relies on.

Application hosting models where desktop applications are delivered on cloud servers is  often overlooked when businesses go looking for cloud software because they are shopping for software and not the platform.

With Software as a Service (SaaS), the software and the platform are combined and together represent the solution. With application hosting on a cloud server, the software is the same software a business would traditionally run on PCs and servers, but the they are installed and managed on the cloud server rather than the local computers.

The big benefit is the agility of the platform and the user mobility it allows.  The unspoken benefit is that you can still “take your ball and go home” if the service doesn’t work out.

Removing the barriers for adopting an online working model allows the business to experience the benefits attached to cloud computing without introducing unnecessary risk through unneeded changes in software and applications.

Make sense?

J